Farewell to a Fellow Fanatic

A little while ago I learned that Robert L. Atkison, a Pittsburgh area native that I had run into a couple of times at a friend's BBQ event had passed away at the age of 61. I had known that he was interested in some rail topics, but was actually surprised to learn from his obituary that he was a "rail fanatic". The reason he is getting a shout out here on my signaling blog is because he always went by Brady, not Robert. This didn't click until I saw a shared photo of his work van.

If you see on the door he has a PRR style station sign for BRADY tower, located on the Allegheny River near East Brady, PA.

BRADY tower has actually come up in a previous article on US&S CTC using coded track circuits and I had visited the site (now a rail trail) back in 2021. Anyway, this just goes to show how people can have hidden depths that might actually be staring you in the face. I'm sorry I never got to talk towers with Robert/Brady, however we did have a bunch of conversations on other fun topics. I'll make a point to get back to the BRADY tower location and put down something in his memory.

Caught on Camera: Mendon, MO Level Crossing

 One side effect of taking photos from the back of long distance Amtrak trains is that from time to time you get a good shot of what might end up in a national news story. When the Mendon, Missouri grade crossing accident and derailment first took place in the summer of 2022 my impression was that it was located at a random farm crossing in the middle of nowhere. Since the former ATSF main line lost its searchlight signals over a decade ago there was no real need to check on the status of a notable signal such as this Conrail era signal that almost got wiped out in an Columbus, OH area derailment.  

Anyway, while watching the above Plainly Difficult production on the incident, I spotted what appeared to be a signal location adjacent to the collision site on County Road 113. Checking the archives I discovered a clear photo of the accident site along with the Milepost 363 intermediate signals taken from the rear of the Southwest Chief in 2013.

In addition to the signals and the unprotected grade crossing we can also see the ATS inductors that allowed for 90mph speeds across the state of Missouri. These had been recently removed by the time of the accident due to PTC making the legacy system unnecessary.  Anyway the moral of the story is to take photos of everything because you'll never know what might be historically significant.

THORN Goes on a Diet and Other Pneumatic News

Since I last visited THRON interlocking on Amtrak's Harrisburg Line, more progress has been made towards rationalizing the interlocking and closing the tower. Similar to what has taken place at PAOLI, redundant crossovers and stub tracks have been removed, although it is still not clear what the final outcome will be as SEPTA service looks to expand back to Coatsville and Parkesburg. 

As recently as 2019 THORN was still in an approximation of its 1970's configuration with a 6-track full crossover and stub tracks for the old Trenton Cuttoff, removed track #3 in both directions and the #6 yard track. You can see my video post on an operator setting up a typical SEPTA R5 local movement across the entire plant.

However since then Amtrak has removed the worst of the redundancies with the 53 turnout and 55 crossover being completely removed, the 49, 51, 57 and 61 crossovers being reduced to turnouts, track #3 being removed in its entirely along with most of track #6 and the through section of track #5. Perhaps most significantly the interlocking has been completely converted to electric point machines, despite new A-5 point machines being installed on the #41 and #43 crossovers in 2019. You can browse the current state of the interlocking here. 

Elsewhere on the pneumatic front, OVERBROOK interlocking has seen continued attrition of its A-5 point machines with as few as 3, the #11, #15 and #19, remaining in service. The casualty list includes the 019 switch in the former Woodbine section of the plant.

After PAOLI's conversion a few years ago, this leaves ZOO interlocking as the only intact pneumatic interlocking plant on the Harrisburg Line.

Caught on Camera: Bastard A-5

While getting photos around the JO section of ZOO interlocking I noticed some interesting writing on the A-5 pneumatic point machine attached to the 131 switch.

In stenciling the signaling department appears to have labeled the point machine as a "bastard". Someone else, perhaps another employee, perhaps a local, has expanded upon this with "/whore". Given that the points appear to show evidence of a recent rebuild, it is possible that this A-5 has been assembled from the parts of others or contain a non-standard modification. I believe that A-5's have a notion of handedness that could be at play here. If whatever the modification was not entirely successful that could have resulted in the editorial comment.